Audience Theory

There are two main theory's when it comes to the audience these are:
- The effects model or hypodermic model
- The uses and gratifications model

The effects model (hypodermic model)

This is the idea that the consumption of these texts has an impact or influence on the audience. This is often seen a negative effect and that the audience are powerless to prevent influence from these texts. The messages in the media text are almost injected into the audience and the media almost works like a drug and the audience are doped, duped and addicted.
There are experiments which try to prove this effect such as The Bobo Doll experiment which is very controversial experiment. It was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura. The children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown doll, 88% of these children copied the violent behaviour when they were put in a room with the doll and 40% reproduced this behaviour 8 months later.



This shows that the consumption of texts can trigger violence which may also prove the hypodermic model of the media texts affecting people to be true.
The effects model, which is backed up by the Bobo Doll experiment is still the most dominant theory.
It is thought that many violent crimes have been the result of texts, such as Childs play 3, A clockwork orange and severance, but there was no real proof that these violent acts were linked top these texts.

The uses and gratification model

It is unclear if there is a link between the consumption of violent texts such as horror film and violent acts. It is clear that this theory is flawed and many people who consume these texts do not commit violent acts. Which is why this new theory was necessary.
The uses and gratifications theory is basically the opposite of the effects model. It is the idea that the audience use the texts and are not used by it, and just use it for their own gratification or pleasure. In this theory the audience have the power and not the texts. The audience are able to reject, use or play with the meaning however they want. This is why they use these texts for needs such as escapism, diversion, pleasure and information. This theory suggests that violent media texts are actually helpful as the audience act out there violent impulses through these texts and the audience are less likely to commit violent acts.